How to disable onItemSelectedListener to be invoked when setting selected item by code

A cleaner solution, in my opinion, to differentiate between programmatic and user-initiated changes is the following:

Create your listener for the spinner as both an OnTouchListener and OnItemSelectedListener

public class SpinnerInteractionListener implements AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener, View.OnTouchListener {

    boolean userSelect = false;

    @Override
    public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
        userSelect = true;
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int pos, long id) {
        if (userSelect) { 
            // Your selection handling code here
            userSelect = false;
        }
    }

}

Add the listener to the spinner registering for both event types

SpinnerInteractionListener listener = new SpinnerInteractionListener();
mSpinnerView.setOnTouchListener(listener);
mSpinnerView.setOnItemSelectedListener(listener);

This way, any unexpected calls to your handler method due to initialization or re-initialization will be ignored.

Okay, I got it working the way I want to now.

The thing to understand here (and I did not when I was writing that question...) is that everything in Android runs in one thread - the UI thread.

Meaning: even though you set Spinner's values here and there: they are only updated (visually) and their listeners are only called after all methods you're currently in (like onCreate, onResume or whatever) are finished.

This allows the following:

• keep the selected positions in field variables. (like currentPos1, currentPos2)
• the listeners onItemSelectedListener() call a method like refreshMyResult() or whatever.
• when setting positions programmatically, set the spinners and call your own refresh method manually right after that.

The refreshMyResult() method looks like this:

int newPos1 = mySpinner1.getSelectedItemPosition();
int newPos2 = mySpinner2.getSelectedItemPosition();
// only do something if update is not done yet
if (newPos1 != currentPos1 || newPos2 != currentPos2) {
    currentPos1 = newPos1;
    currentPos2 = newPos2;

    // do whatever has to be done to update things!

}

Because the listeners will be called later - and by then, the remembered position in currentPos is already updated - nothing will happen and no unnecessary update of anything else will take place. When a user selects a new value in one of the spinners, well - the update will be performed accordingly!

That's it! :-)

Ahh - one more thing: the answer to my question is: No. The listeners cannot be disabled (easily) and will be called whenever a value is changed.

I have an easier, and I think, better solution. Since I had to refresh the spinners even after initialization, this is a more generic approach. Please refer the accepted answer:

Undesired onItemSelected calls